Finished the base section of this marathon training cycle with a nice 50km week. Really felt the fitness gains today. Looking back to 6 weeks ago, I was injured, hadn't run 2 consecutive days for months, was sitting on 6:50 to 7:20 pace, generally unfit. Now I ran 6:20 (the top end of my assigned base pace) pretty easily and have all week, did a race were I averaged 6:06 for 12km (3 of the kms were 6:30 as I tried to get around people, so that tells you how fast I was actually going). The more specific training starts next week, with intervals, tempos and long runs. I'm very happy to have a solid base in place. I didn't build to 70km as I originally planned due to a chest infection, but I'm in a great place to ramp up my training.